Morano thanks chair and begins questioning on veteran recruitment

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate the consideration.

I think every council member has the experience of being in a hearing for 20, 30, 40 minutes without being able to ask a single question because the chair chooses to ask so many of those questions.

So thank you for the consideration as well.

Thank you, Deputy Commissioner, for your testimony as well.

I want to begin with our veterans.

I have the privilege of serving.

I'm being asked the Veterans Committee Chair, so it's an issue that I'm particularly interested in.

Your testimony discusses several recruitment programs, but I'd like to know what we're doing specifically to recruit veterans into city government.

We know veterans can use VetConnect NYC to access different employment services, but the Comptroller's Report recently raised some concerns about that portal.

What is DCAS doing to recruit veterans simply beyond referring them to a website?

Thank you for that question.

And so first and foremost, we work very closely with our sister agency, you know, the Department of Veterans Affairs, to share information about upcoming examinations and, you know, information that would help

attract veterans into the city's workforce.

In addition, as it relates to our examination program, veterans are also, you know,

eligible to take to claim, you know, special credits and fee waivers to help remove any barriers into the civil service system.

I would also mention that we most recently participated in an event with the Department of Veterans Affairs to share information about civil service.

Our Office of Citywide Recruitment attended and we were there, you know, to share information about

the civil service system in general, examinations and other services that may be available to veterans who are looking to join the

the system.

So, you know, in general, we do share that information broadly with our sister agency.

Kaden, I don't know if you want to add anything else.

Thank you for that question.

We do engage communities that work specifically with veterans.

So across the years, we try to develop relationships specifically with those organizations.

We also try to work with schools who have veteran-specific offices and to share the information about civil service, to go into more details about the veteran fee waivers that folks are able to get, the spouse fee waivers,

and also going into more details about what it means to qualify for the veterans credit.

So we also have those individuals on our mailing list who's getting our newsletters on a regular basis.

There's always opportunities to increase our outreach to those communities, but we definitely make a dedicated effort to reach that community.